Sunday, April 14, 2013

Zen and the Art of Pet Parenthood

We used to half-joke that we couldn't own anything nice while our children were young. Tate was our worst offender. Last August we finally repainted the walls. They were covered in hand prints and foot prints. They had the lingering stains of spilled sodas. And Tate liked to decorate with pens and pencils and even nail polish. So we repainted. It's plain, but it looks clean at least.

We've managed to go many, many months with limited damage to our walls. Or our floors. For the most part.

So I don't know what I was thinking when I agreed to add another member to our family. After all we have clean walls! We can buy nice things again! Our family is complete! But somehow, getting a pet felt okay. And the opportunity just fell in our laps. It was a fluke- a high school teacher (and colleague) of mine - someone whom I adored and who was always very good to me - bumped into my family at the grocery store the day before Easter. We got to talking, and it turned out he breeds Labrador retrievers. He very graciously gifted us one.

As much as I love children, I'm not so much a pet person. I've never had a puppy. And I'm pretty sure I could have made it through life without ever having had one. But the kids are happy. And Jason is thrilled. And the dog is cute. We thought of all sorts of names we liked, but I didn't want to give him any names that would lead to self-fulfilling prophecies (like Digger). I pushed hard for Dozer. But he's not a sleepy puppy. So we landed on Bandit.

1 comment:

If he starts gnawing on your furniture, buy real cow bones from the butcher. They usually cut them into 1 or 2 inch slices. I've got a whole set of (formerly) pristine teak deck furniture with every possible corner gnawed on my my last puppy. And then, she gnawed on trim and window screens. Sigh.

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About This Blog

This started as a blog about our adoption adventures. It's been three adoptions and six years since our last "familyversary," and it's become something different.

I hope you'll check in from time to time to share in our growing pains and joys, laugh along with us, and see a little of yourselves in us.

I'm a wife and mother, a daughter and sister. I'm also a pet-tolerator and dishwasher, a weed-puller and laundry-doer. I'm a photographer and writer, too. But mostly, I'm just like everyone else - trying to keep perspective, but not always doing it particularly well.